Movie appeal

She's All That

(1999)

She's All That Blu-ray offers solid video and superb audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release

Zack is the reigning stud of Harrison High School, and everyone thinks his match with princess Taylor will last forever. When Taylor dumps him for an obnoxious star of "The Real World", Zack is devastated. But he rebounds, betting his friend Dean that he can turn any girl into a prom queen. Dean chooses Laney, a geeky outcast who worries about Bosnia and spends her days painting in her basement. Laney has no time for Zack, but he persists and as time goes by, the two find themselves friends. Rather than raising her to his social level, Zack finds himself falling hard for non-conformist Laney.

For more about She's All That and the She's All That Blu-ray release, see She's All That Blu-ray Review published by Jeffrey Kauffman on January 2, 2012 where this Blu-ray release scored 3.5 out of 5.

She's All That Blu-ray Review

She's all what?

When the Rachael Leigh Cook character in She's All That tells the Freddie Prinze, Jr. character that she "feels
like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman" (minus "all the hooker stuff"), she's referencing just one of a veritable
universe of projects which at the very least can be tangentially tied to the ancient myth of Pygmalion, the Cypriot
sculptor who fell in love with one of his creations, bringing it to life (with a little help from Venus). The myth of
Pygmalion has been a source of inspiration for countless artists in virtually every genre of the Fine Arts, from painting to
poetry to literature to ballet. But probably the myth's best known adaptation is the same titled play by George Bernard
Shaw, a play which of course updated the setting to include an English linguistics expert named Henry Higgins
attempting to gentrify Cockney flower salesgirl Eliza Doolittle. That play (later filmed with Leslie Howard and Wendy
Hiller) in turn became the basis for the much beloved Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady (interestingly,
Lerner and Loewe's chief competitors in the Broadway musical arena at that time, Rodgers and Hammerstein, had also
attempted to musicalize Shaw's play, but had given up on it a few years prior to Lerner and Loewe finally carrying the
torch). Shaw's Pygmalion and the musicalized My Fair Lady are in fact almost allegorical treatments of
the original myth, and it's in fact the now little remembered Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash (yes, that Ogden Nash)
musical One Touch of Venus which really most closely approximates the original story. (The Broadway One
Touch of Venus featured a star burnishing performance from Mary Martin, but when the property was
Hollywoodized, most of its score was jettisoned and the role of Venus went to Ava Gardner). A huge number of films—
including that Julia Roberts movie alluded to above—can trace their heritage at least partially to either Pygmalion (the
myth) or Pygmalion (the play or film), and that includes the unassuming teen hit from a bit over a decade ago,
She's All That. To say that scenarist R. Lee Fleming, Jr. is no George Bernard Shaw should certainly come as no
huge surprise, but the film has its fleeting charms and should bring back some warm memories for those who were
adolescents or teens circa 1999 and may have had a less critical (or jaundiced) eye toward the film's failings then than
they might have now as cynical adults.

Prinze portrays high school jock and all around Big Man on Campus Zack Siler, a kid who excels at seemingly everything
(including perhaps unbelievably, academics) and who has the world at his beck and call. Zack has a rude wake up call
early in the film when his similarly "gifted" girlfriend Taylor (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe) returns from Spring Break with the
devastating news that she has fallen for the boorish star of a recent iteration of MTV's The Real World, the
hilariously named Brock Hudson (Matthew Lillard). That sets Zack into a momentary tailspin as he wonders if his place
in
high school society will be threatened, especially with the impending Senior Prom, but he's soon challenged to a bet by
his
buddy Dean (Paul Walker), who wagers that Zack is incapable of transforming a low on the totem pole classmate into a
girl who could actually give Taylor a run for her Homecoming Queen money. Zack of course rises to the challenge, and
Dean selects the nerdy art student Laney Boggs (Rachael Leigh Cook) as this film's Eliza Doolittle.

There's a slightly smarmy subtext to quite a bit of She's All That which neither the Shaw play nor its various
offshoots seemed to have, despite the similarities of the plot. While Eliza may not fully realize the ramifications of the
wager into which Higgins has entered, she surely is aware she's being made over, for better or worse, and that
makeover indeed provides a lot, if not most, of the conflict of the piece, much of which stems from Eliza's own conflicted
feelings about her transformation. In She's All That, the bet angle is handled completely predictably, with Laney
unaware of what's going on until a third act betrayal and denouement which leads to a brief tempestuous falling out
between Laney and Zack before the equally predictable happy ending. But in this setting, the whole transformation of
Laney from a despised nerd to a contender for the title of most popular girl in school seems a bit gag-reflex inducing,
especially considering the rude behavior of virtually everyone in the film who's already popular. This
smarminess is only partially mitigated by the (yes, predictable) turn of events where Zack ends up really falling
for Laney, making the bet unpalatable to even him.

That leaves the film precariously balanced between outlandish comedy (mostly courtesy of a buffoonish performance by
Lillard as the Real World lout) and an attempt at "meaningful" introspection, as in a kind of weird but quirkily
effective sequence where Zack attends a performance art outing with Laney and ends up doing a little routine with a
hackey-sack that mirrors his own internal conflict about where his life is going. Unfortunately, the film is neither laugh
out loud funny enough nor essentially dramatically compelling enough to ever make a convincing case in one direction or
the other, and while amiable enough, She's All That often just kind of lies there, waiting for the next predictable
shoe to drop.

This is a film that no doubt appealed to a certain age group when it came out, younger folks who were swayed by the
stars' charisma and the sweet romantic notion that even a social outcast could be "remade" into someone with
everything at her beck and call. But is that a message that still resonates in this era of "come as you are"?
There have been feminist screeds written about the inequities at play in Shaw's Pygmalion and its descendants
(screeds which ignore Shaw's original version where Eliza basically tells Henry to "shove it," although she does of
course end up with the equally absurd Freddie). She's All That follows in a long tradition of ugly ducklings being
reborn as beautiful swans, with of course the subtext that their inherent "swan-dom" was there all along, just waiting
for the right Prince Charming to help it flourish. The strong independent women of today may be saying collectively, "No
thanks, I'll do it myself."

She's All That is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate/Miramax with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is an oddly
inconsistent transfer that at times looks quite nicely sharp and detailed, and at other times sort of morphs itself (a la its heroine) into something
else entirely, with a muddy, soft appearance, and some murky nighttime and dark sequences (notably the final dance segment). Color timing
seems just slightly off, at least at times: notice Rachael Leigh Cook's oddly yellow flesh tones, especially in the early scenes of the film. Overall,
though, this is a weirdly bifurcated transfer that ping pongs between a decently sharp and well detailed transfer, offering suitably robust color
and an attractive, cinematic look, and a kind of mushy soft ambience where fine detail is lacking and colors don't quite pop the way they should.
There does
not appear to have been either over aggressive digital sharpening or noise reduction applied to this release.

She's All That features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which gets off to a boisterous, source cue start and then rarely lets up
afterward. Iscove populates the film with lots of pop and rock music, including Sixpence None the Richer (hey, they were huge in 1999),
and that helps open the film up sonically beyond the typical romantic comedy strictures. There are a number of nicely immersive moments in the
film, including a beach volleyball scene and the big dance number that caps the film (and which seems like a bizarre Glee routine based
on West Side Story). Fidelity is excellent on the DTS track, with dialogue and the occasional effect well prioritized, but it's really in the
film's appealing use of music that the soundtrack really comes fully to life.

Commentary by Director Robert Iscove. This is a fitfully interesting commentary that is kind of laugh out
loud funny when Iscove attempts to infuse deep, deep meaning into the film and its characters' motiviations, but is
somewhat more captivating when he's simply giving production data like casting a bunch of people who would go on to
greater fame and fortune. Interestingly, he barely comments about the notorious dance scene that caps the film,
mentioning only that Adam Shankman (Hairspray) choreographed it and that he never would have done it had the
film been a drama.

She's All That probably will go down easiest for those who view it as a little time capsule, quaint and predictable,
enjoyable in its own way, but ultimately no great shakes. The film is perhaps the most fun for giving us early career turns
by a host of interesting people, including Anna Paquin as Prinze's sister, Dulé Hill as another buddy of Zack's, and Usher as
the school's resident DJ (didn't your school have one of those?). The stars are uniformly fine, if not exceptional, but
the film's screenplay never delivers hearty enough laughs or deep enough emotions to ever fully connect with the audience.
If you have fond memories of She's All That from a decade or so ago, you'll probably enjoy it in this new high
definition offering. For everyone else, start with the Howard-Hiller Pygmalion instead, and then work your way
forward.

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She's All That Blu-ray, News and Updates

Next year, Lionsgate Home Entertainment will release She's All That on Blu-ray. This reworking of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion stars Freddie Prinze, Jr., (I Know What You Did Last Summer) as a teenager who gives a nerd (Rachael Leigh Cook, Josie and the Pussycats) ...

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